Korsmo’s Weekly Roundup: Principals and Chardonnay

Well. What to say? No. Really. What is there to say? We aren’t going to talk about politics in the other Washington lest we start looking for an all-too-early excuse for room temperature chardonnay. And there’s not been a ton of progress – not public anyway – on the state budget. Fret not! It’s never a bad time to get smarter about education funding. (Put down that chardonnay! Learning is fun!)

They Call Me McCleary: First, you can catch yourself up on where things stand in the negotiations over ed funding – often shorthanded by the name of the court case the state is responding to: McCleary. Don’t miss the fight over the “Staff Mix” in the budget debate or you’ll never get the full story on how we build and perpetuate inequitable funding systems. If you’re going to understand ed funding, it’s good to know where the money goes. And, lest you forget, the people that make up the bulk of the system’s budget have thoughts on how the money should be used.

While we wrestle this issue to the ground and then some other states are working to solve the same problem.

It’s the Principal of the Thing: When you think of a school principal’s day what comes to mind? Waltzing through classroom after classroom interacting with teachers and kids, bringing a waft of fresh instructional leadership into every room they enter? Or maybe you remember the time(s) you were sent to the principal’s office and a different kind of wafting. Truth is that for many the day consists of one fire drill – sometimes literally – after another. Lunch duty, bus patrol, tying shoes, negotiating newly exposed hormones among tween girls, kids and sometimes parents with serious trauma, interspersed with classroom observations and report after report compiled and submitted. D.C. public schools is trying to get their principal corps back into the role they were hired for: instructional leadership.

And for as sexy as I just made the whole principal experience sound, teachers will climb the ranks of administration because it’s the only way to a significant increase in pay.

The Rest:

When confronted with a problem, one district changed everything to solve it.